Boxborough board backs school measure

Wednesday

Apr 23, 2014 at 1:51 PMApr 23, 2014 at 1:51 PM

By Mark Schulert

beacon@wickedlocal.com

and Margaret Smith

msmith@wickedlocal.com

Selectmen voted unanimously to back a resolution pledging not to oppose any community seeking to withdraw from the Minuteman school district, with the net goal of making revisions in the school’s agreement easier to adopt. The town of Wayland recently rejected the agreement.

The board voted 5-0 to accept the measure, following a recent meeting in which Selectmen Chairman Vince Amoroso, Selectman Les Fox and Town Administrator Selina Shaw participated and called by a Needham selectman.

But the future of the revised agreement – which requires the assent of all 16 members at Town Meeting – remains unclear.

Amoroso said no one from Wayland attended the meeting. He said proponents hope Wayland will hold a vote to reconsider. Wayland at its Town Meeting also backed a non-binding resolution to withdraw from the district.

As of deadline, Weston was mulling its stance on the revised agreement.

"The idea is not to put it on the warrant, unless required by law. We wouldn’t act in a way contrary to law," Amoroso said, adding that the resolution had been vetted by counsel. For Boxborough’s part, Amoroso said, "We feel it would give voters of the town of Boxborough the greatest range of options on May 12," the date of Town Meeting.

Boxborough itself will consider a vote to withdraw from the school district at Town Meeting, after selectmen recently voted to reopen the warrant to include an article to that effect. "All those options are possible. We wanted to preserve the town’s greatest range of options," Amoroso said.

In recent town meetings, Lexington approved the amended agreement, as did Acton, while Lincoln passed over the article in order to see how the debate would unfold in other communities.

Under the terms of the current agreement, no community can withdraw without consent of all the other communities by means of a Town Meeting vote, and approval of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Under the proposed amendment, only a majority of member communities would have to approve a community’s withdrawal.

Among the points of contention in the revised agreement are proposed capital assessments for work on the school building, apportioned in part on calculations of each member community’s wealth. For Wayland, a capital surcharge would increase that town’s assessment by 10 percent which opponents of the revised agreement in that town found unacceptable.

Some critics including those in Wayland also disagree with the fact that Minuteman supports several students from towns not in the district – at a cost of $18,000 tuition set by the state commissioner of education – but those towns are not charged an assessment for the capital work.